Savage Cinderella

Savage Cinderella-Chapter 9-Finding Brinn

"Let me get to work on my story. I'll have something for you to look at by the end of the day tomorrow." Justin extricated himself from the clutches of his boss and headed to his desk to start writing.

But the words wouldn't come. He couldn't possibly make up anything that would be nearly close to or as interesting as the truth, and he couldn't stop thinking about the reality of what had actually happened. Brinn was like some mystical creature that transcended reality—a feral child grown into a young woman. Her survival in the mountains was beyond miraculous. As much as he admired her strength, her tenacity, and her obvious iron will, his heart still ached at the thought of her alone on the mountain, facing a life of fear and desolation. Her story was too important not to tell.  

It was a story that could write his ticket as a photojournalist—if he was willing to go back on his word. He’d reluctantly promised Brinn that he wouldn't tell anyone about her. The terror in her expression and her extreme physical response to the idea of being discovered seemed disproportionate to the threat—unless whoever hurt her found out where she was. And why was she so freaked out about the police? 

Whatever her story was, the fear in her eyes overrode any argument he had. Finding out the truth about her identity was his first order of business. Without pictures, and only a first name to go on, he really had nothing to tell anyway.

Justin drew a folded paper from his back pocket. Other than a small tin of burdock salve, it was the only evidence he had that Brinn even existed. He’d dropped off the tin to a buddy at the crime lab that morning and asked him to ID any fingerprints. It couldn’t hurt to check if she was in the system. He unfolded the square and flattened it on his desk, discreetly looking around to make sure no one else was watching. Brinn’s self-portrait lay before him, the charcoal smudged at the creases. Her forlorn expression and the deep sadness in her eyes called out to him as she peered into the still water. 

Writing her story could only help her, right? It would free her from her lonely existence. She would be better off in the world. But how would someone like her take to being a celebrity? If he wrote about her, every nut job paparazzo would comb the hills looking for her and she’d never be truly free. There would be nowhere she could hide from whatever she was afraid of.    

He released a sigh of resignation as he remembered a lesson learned from his grandfather when he was a teenager on the verge of trouble: honesty and dependability will get you further in life than ambition. Being that his own father wasn’t what he would call honest or dependable, but most definitely ambitious, Justin had stubbornly held, instead, to his grandfather’s credo.

He wanted more than anything to believe he could be a better man than his father. Loyalty and self-respect—traits his father lacked—meant everything to him. Those traits, he was finding, were often at odds with his chosen profession. For now, his career would have to take a back seat to doing the right thing. Brinn’s future was in his hands. Her best interests had to be his first priority. He stared at the blank page before him. Who was she, where had she come from, and what was he going to do to help her? 

Unable to fill the blank page before him and losing focus on the task at hand, Justin surfed the web for clues. He had access to government databases, police records, and old newspaper reports that most people had no idea how to find. Research was one of his strengths. He guessed her age to be around eighteen. He couldn't be certain and Brinn didn't know. She hadn't told him much at all about her past and couldn't or wouldn't tell him how she'd come to be on the mountain—just that she had been there for about eight years.

Justin’s heart ached with sadness as he thought about the life she’d lived over those eight years. She measured time by counting the winters she'd survived. The Georgia mountain climate was fairly temperate and didn't get much colder than the thirties or forties even in winter, but the higher altitudes with unexpected snowstorms, heavy rainfall, and precipitous winds must have been a brutal existence for a small child. It could only have been by luck, the grace of God, and her own sheer force of will that she had survived at all.

When Justin had questioned Brinn about her family, she became sullen. “My mother and father are dead and no one else would ever want me after...” She had refused to finish and whatever she could not say haunted Justin, confirming to him more than ever that she needed his help. An uncomfortable twist of his insides made him wonder whether he would be able to protect her from whomever she was afraid of. That is, if he could convince her to come down from the mountain. 

It didn’t take him long, searching through archives and news clippings, missing persons’ reports and death notices, when his attention was captured by an article in the Atlanta Times from ten years earlier, reporting a missing girl. Her name was Briana Hathaway, the only child of then-Senator John Hathaway and his wife, Dr. Shannon Hathaway. They reported their daughter missing from Piedmont Park on August 28th. 

The words blurred and Justin's eyes focused only on the picture of the little girl. The teardrop-shaped face, the full-lipped smile, and the wide, gently angled eyes that stared out to him from the page were undeniably that of a much younger, chubbier, Brinn. She had long, straight, shiny black hair and held a teddy bear in the picture. Justin smiled at the little girl on the screen before him. "Hello, Briana Hathaway. It's nice to meet you. Now, let's see what really happened to your parents."